


Home Economics

by squarepeg



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU - Magical Airfarers, Bottom Draco Malfoy, Career Change, Chief Mate Ron, Dubious Consent, M/M, Praise Kink, Prisoner Draco Malfoy, Ship Captain Harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:07:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26837188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squarepeg/pseuds/squarepeg
Summary: “You chose to take it? You chose to take Home Ec?”“Yes.”“Prove it,” Harry guffawed.Draco drew his wand and flicked it fancifully in two neat curlicues with an exaggerated curtsy and long swish downwards to finish. “Repono!”
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Ron Weasley
Comments: 3
Kudos: 94





	Home Economics

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Sorry this isn't an update to one of my other stories, but I woke up with this story fully formed and top of mind today! Hope everyone is doing well and thanks for reading my ridiculous AU.

A clap of raucous thunder shook the keel of the boat and upturned all of their precious cargo. 

“Bloody buggering fuck, mate, we’re in a right load of trouble now,” Ron exclaimed as he watched millions of potions puddle together at their feet and begin to slowly evaporate into the clouds before their eyes. 

Harry was lost for words and nodded dumbly, silenced by the financial enormity of the disaster unfolding in real time.

“Reckon we, er, reckon we ought to call Hermione?”

“Granger can’t help you, you utter buffoon. She was pants at Home Economics,” drawled a haughty voice from across the hold. 

“Shut the fuck up, Malfoy,” Harry cursed at him. 

“How would you know, ferret?” Ron asked, incensed that their internee chose now of all the ridiculous times to speak his piece. 

Draco, apparently losing the confidence he had miraculously mustered, muttered something unintelligible into the ether.

“What was that?” Harry asked.

More of his mumbles were gobbled up by the growing mess and the wicked storm winds before they could reach Harry and Ron. 

“Speak up,” Ron snapped.

“I took it with her,” Draco admitted. He sounded defeated and exasperated, which Ron would have more sympathy for if he spoke respectfully to the two of them more than once per transatlantic voyage. 

It took Harry a few seconds to process this new information before he doubled over in peels of derisive laughter.

“You took it? Malfoy, only birds were made to take that class.”

“You could elect to take it.” Draco spoke clearly, though his attention was trained entirely on the sopping floorboards now. Floorboards that were distressingly rocking side to side at an alarming rate, considering the three of them were sailing through angrily spitting arcus clouds at about four thousand meters above sea level. 

Harry’s laughter grew louder, but he managed to eke out a question as he rubbed a stitch in his side, “You chose to take it? You chose to take Home Ec?”

“Yes.”

“Prove it,” Harry guffawed. 

Draco drew his wand and flicked it fancifully in two neat curlicues with an exaggerated curtsy and long swish downwards to finish. “Repono!”

All of the potions slowly slithered back into their vials and restored themselves. All told, with Malfoy’s spellwork, they hadn’t lost more than a case. One case could easily be explained away as incidental damages. Ron breathed a heavy sigh of relief and relaxed his stance considerably. Harry continued his tittering. 

“Was that curtsy necessary for casting?”

“Yes, you idiot!” Draco spat with all the venom he had packed in their school years, his eyes lifting dramatically to meet Harry’s head on. 

“Listen here, Malfoy, you will not disrespect me on my own bloody ship. Would you like to try that again?”

Draco ducked his head, rightly cowed by Harry’s response. “Yes, Captain, the curtsy was necessary for the casting. Repono needs a demure stance to effectively set a room to rights in one go, so to speak.”

Harry smirked, “Well then, maybe you should curtsy when speaking to me from now on, Malfoy.”

“Yes, Captain.” Draco rolled his eyes but lowered himself accordingly, clearly hoping to be dismissed from this interaction quickly with his immediate obedience. 

Ron cleared his throat, “That was a powerful spell, ferret. I don’t even think I’ve ever seen my mum cast that one so beautifully.”

Draco reddened further and looked vaguely pleased. 

“Er - beautifully?”

Ron nodded, “There’s a beauty in household magic. Surely you’ve noticed, Harry. The lilting and inquisitive tone, feminine wandwork. It’s nice.”

Harry whistled, “Think you may have finally gone round the twist on that one, mate.”

Ron shrugged, “Do you think you could leave me and the ferret alone for a minute? I want to test the extent of his knowledge here. I think we may have misjudged his most useful skillsets so far.”

“Er, sure. I should head back to the bridge and get us safely through the storm anyway.”

“Thanks, mate.”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Harry called over his shoulder, the sentiment meant little considering there wasn’t much he’d draw the line at where Malfoy was concerned. 

“So, Home Economics.” It was a statement. Ron was a pureblood. He knew the significance of the course far outstripped the anti-feminist symbol Hermione spent two years railing against before Dumbledore finally conceded and allowed her to opt out of the course in fifth year. 

“I, yes, I elected to take it. I wanted to take it.”

“But why? You had house elves at the Manor.” 

Ron was goading him. Draco knew it. He just wasn’t in a place where he could do much about it. 

“I chose to take it in case my future husband’s household didn’t have them.”

Ron hummed, “Future husband. Huh, that’s a big jump to assume you’ll have a husband one day when you were just a thirteen year old boy.”

Draco glared at him petulantly. “I hardly could have envisioned my true future back then.”

“I suppose a husband is less outlandish than the reality for you. I mean, you were such a coward, ferret. Even I couldn’t have predicted it. You chose to leave the confines of your prison cell on Azkaban and asked to be interned on Harry’s ship. Asked to be ours for the remainder of your sentence. What would your father have said? Hearing you beg for respite after just two months surrounded by dementors?”

Ron knew the answer to this one, too. He had made Draco say it often enough in the first year he was aboard with them, back when they were all getting used to this arrangement, back when the cruelty of the war still seemed to suffocate his every waking moment. Hearing Draco say it never got old though. 

“He’d say that I was a soft little boy, not worth the Malfoy name.” 

“Not worth the Malfoy name. That has a new meaning now that I know you were so eager to take another,” Ron slowly approached Draco until they were nearly chest to chest. “Tell me, Malfoy, would any name do? So long as a cock came with it?”

Draco gasped. Seventeen years of pureblood breeding and etiquette were not easily erased despite Ron and Harry trying their hardest to prod the prude out of him. “No. I had thought I’d join the Rowle family back then. Their son was handsome and bent. Like me.”

“Handsome is not what I’d call you. Pretty, sure, but handsome? No, definitely not,” Draco pushed at him weakly and Ron snorted before continuing on. “That was some real pretty wandwork, precise curlicues and a deep curtsy. Ginny’d never been able to get her wrists to rotate petitely enough. You must have practiced very hard at it.”

Ron circled his much larger hands around Draco’s wrists before he could push at him again. He began to draw slow circles on Draco’s pulse points with his thumbs. “You wanted to be good, hmm? You wanted to be soft and sweet and run a nice household for your man.”

Draco’s breath hitched a bit and he met Ron’s eyes reproachfully. “I didn’t,” he denied as he tried to wiggle out of Ron’s grasp. “I just wanted to be prepared for every eventuality. We were careening towards war, Weasley.”

“Not in third year, we weren’t.”

“It was evident in my household even if it wasn’t prescient yet in yours.”

Ron dropped Draco’s wrists, choosing instead to wrap his right arm around his waist and fist his left hand in his silky and loose blond hair in lieu of answering that. It was rather hard for Draco to deny how this positioning was affecting him. He might’ve been able to pass off his labored breathing as anger before, but it was quite obvious to Ron that it was arousal given the hard push of his aching need evident against Ron’s thigh. Ron tilted Draco’s head back, nosing and nipping at the base of his neck languidly. 

“I always wanted someone to be good for me, you know. Soft and weak, just for me.” Ron yanked his hair roughly and smiled up at him with what Draco could only assume was false sweetness. “There weren’t many soft ladies in Gryffindor though, even less after the war was said and done.”

“I didn’t take the class to be good or whatever else you have set in that fathomless head of yours. I simply loathe disorder. It pays to know some powerful cleaning charms, I’ll have you know.”

Ron loosened his grip on Draco’s hair and twirled a few strands fondly between his fingers. “It was a pretty powerful cleaning charm you cast there, actually. Very advanced housekeeping magic. I’d like to see some more, maybe some cooking charms as well, while you’re at it. Some laundry spells? You’d make a good steward, Malfoy. Preparing our meals, maintaining our quarters, inventorying the stores, do you think you’d like that?” 

Ron dropped his fingers from Draco’s hair and trailed them lightly over his waist, slowly and lightly dragging his blunt fingernails up and down his side. Draco bucked helplessly in his hold. “Would you?” He asked again. “I know a steward is a far cry from a wife and a ship isn’t quite a home, but you only have a couple years left on your sentence. Think of it as your trial period. If you do well enough, if I like you enough, maybe I’ll keep you.” 

"Is that what turns you on, Weasley? A kept home? Kind of trite."

Ron smirked at him and delivered a sharp smack to his backside, "One of many things, Malfoy. What do you say?"

“Merlin, yes. Weasley, you absolute ass, yes, I’d like that.”

“Good boy,” Ron praised before he plundered his prize.


End file.
